The State of the RPG Market in 1 Year

[Easy e]

There is a lot of change going on in the world of RPGs today. This makes me interested in what RPG gamers themselves think will be different in the market than it is in March 2023.

So, you walk into your Friendly Local Game Store (FLGS) in a years time. It is March 2024. What do you see on the wall that is markedly different than what you see today? What are people doing at the tables?

Maybe you don't go into a FLGS at all, but are instead on an Online Platform, what is different? What are people looking to play? How are people interacting with each other?

[Anonymouswizard]

Pulling pretty much everything out of my behind, but if this was five years I'd be more confident about these predictions.

D&D has moved from 90% of sales to 86% of sales, mostly replaced by whoever gets their new OGL system out first. First place behind the D&D clones is the new World of Darkness stuff, mostly because half the fanbase is buying it just to complain about the contents.

There's been a general meeting be towards more family friendly adventures, but it's still ongoing. The backlash to this has caused a rush of immature 'adult' adventures full of blood and sex and at least one attempt at a Tingleverse Actual Play.

Then suddenly controversy strikes as Monte Cook is accused of inappropriate behaviour, but after two weeks we forget it for a year and resume buying Cypher System content.

Critical Role begins a side project in a new system, this causes a massive increase in that system's sales, but it gets less than 10% off the viewership of their D&D game.

I finally finish and release an RPG. Nobody plays or buys it.

[Ameraaaaaa]

Agree with anonymouswizard.

On top of that i want to add that the mix of the dm shortage*, people with few to no friends, parents who are getting their kids into the hobby, nerdy lovers trying to pass the time, people playing unpopular systems, less people with room in their schedules for rpgs, ect ect. We'll see a rise of smaller groups, one on ones, and even true solos**

Makes sense since rpgs are niche and that unle your a teenager or younger free time is lessening. So unless someone implement the 3 day work week or something (i remember a video on this somewhere) there's gonna be fewer and fewer people playing in general.

Also by the same token the hobby will probably shrink a bit due to same reasons above. Which isn't a problem because the hobby will still be alive due to a multitude of factors such as family game nights, people who do have free time, play by post existing, ect ect.

Rpgs started small then grew bigger during iirc the 80s and/or 90s due to stuff like dnd becoming a household name and a synonym for rpg to the masses and the success of vampire, shadowrun, and others. Also the early Internet.

Then it shrunk for a bit before the critical role explosion and other actual plays. Also the success of dnd 5th and the Internet becoming even bigger.

So i suspect that it'll shrink again soon especially with hasbros mismanagement and eventually if it does become big again either dnd would be owned by another company or some other rpg will be king like what almost happened with vampire.

*look it up but to sum up people are starting to pay dms due to lot's of people wanting to play dnd but not enough to dm for them all

**I've quite often seen posts on reddit and forums stuff like "how to dm for 1 player" or "any good games for one player" or "any good family friendly games" ect ect these seem to be pretty common. Hell there's a pretty big solo rpg community on reddit.

[Psyren]

There will probably be people actually playing Pathfinder 2e at mine

I finally finish and release an RPG. Nobody plays or buys it.

Agree with anonymouswizard.

Ouch

[EggKookoo]

I finally finish and release an RPG. Nobody plays or buys it.

I'm in this post and it makes me uncomfortable.

[Easy e]

If you put it on Drive-Thru RPG, and then make it Pay What You Want..... Someone will buy it!

Play it...... no guarantees on that. :)

[KorvinStarmast]

The RPG market will crash, because

D&Done will be released and will underwhelm with its sales numbers.

A load of players will try to play D&D like the Movie shows it and will be disappointed.

All of the indies will produce games that nobody will buy unless they were on the Kickstarter.

How many of you have played Flotsam, eh?

[Anonymouswizard]

If you put it on Drive-Thru RPG, and then make it Pay What You Want..... Someone will buy it!

Play it...... no guarantees on that. :)

Oh, trust me, it'll be very hard to buy. They'll have to hack DriveThruRPG to stop it from being free